Mark Hogancamp is a photographer and storyteller, but prefers to think of himself as a film director. He’s the creator of Marwencol, a 1/6 scale, WWII-era Belgian village in which he stages and photographs a complex narrative of Nazi intrigue, lesbian melodrama, and Sgt. Rock-style heroics. With his immense cast of dolls, Mark freely intermixes history and fantasy, allowing Kurt Russell to confront Goebbels, time-traveling witches to antagonize Hitler, and Mark himself to battle personal demons.
In 2000, Mark was the victim of an assault outside of a bar that left him with brain damage. Faced with significant memory loss, diminished hand-eye coordination, and crushing anxiety, Mark retreated from the real world into the imaginary one of Marwencol. Inclined to think of the project more as therapy than art, Mark worked for years in obscurity, accumulating thousands of photographs before his unique oeuvre was eventually discovered. A feature spread in Esopus magazine and an award-winning documentary (“Marwencol”) earned Mark international attention and a significant fan base.
